Could we launch a Kickstarter to build a new TBC?
 

I have hopes that I will one day stumble across a DataVideo TBC-1000 after reading my 100,000th Facebook Marketplace listing, or 500th garage sale. That got me thinking about what city and what type of person is more likely to have these. Here are my questions:

• How many of the DataVideo TBC-1000 units were manufactured, more or less? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?
• Who was the typical buyer? A guy who wanted to make his VHS tapes look better on his CRT television or TV-stations that needed to play VHS tape on air? Or someone else?
• How many of these individual units have been up for sale over the last 20 years? Is it the same 200 units circulating or do new pre-owned ones come on the market all the time?
• What would it take for someone with right knowledge to reverse-engineer one of these and fund it through Kickstarter? We're all trying to preserve the past through digitizing a disappearing media. This is important work. We all need the tools to do it, better.

You need to read some of my recent comments here: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vcr-...bc-repair.html

I heavily doubt the TBC-1000 saw anywhere near those high production numbers. Due to the serial numbers, we know it's less than 100k units. But serial numbers don't start at 000001 and go sequential. Most serials also contain non-numeric metrics. So, as an example, the serial 075100 doesn't mean 75,100 units were made.

The typical buyer were, and still are, small studios (conversion shops lumped in here, both pro and quacks), hobbyists, DIY'ers, some degrees of more pro work (not conversion specialty). Once upon a time, you also saw AV needs like big chuches. Broadcasters never really used these models that support consumer analog formats.

20 years is too far back. The units were still sold new in the 2000s. In the early 2010s, we saw a post-recession lull with low prices, and with younger units. More trades, less costly. But it's the 2020s now. The TBC-1000 model specifically sees several monthly at the usual sites, but condition is now very variable, with bad caps now being a concern since the end of 2010s.

We're mostly seeing the same handfuls of units bought and sold, over and over. Most units are now either held permanent (or semi permanent), or trashed/recycled.

You cannot reverse engineer these. Contemporary companies tried, and made crap that is mostly forgotten now. The chips have security, so you can't read the firmware. Almost none of the chips are made anymore anyway, which is the main reason why DataVideo and Cypress existed this now-niche hardware.

I can understand the "hey guys, we can do it!" attitude, but it's misplaced. This isn't something that be crowd-sourced or open-sourced. Most of the people who suggest this haven't even seen more than one TBC, or even none. No concept as to what a challenge this is.

The other question is this: At what price? Most of the people suggesting this are just being cheap bastards, expecting some unrealistic (divorced from reality) low pricing for the final product. Most people are completely oblivious to licensing costs, mandated testing costs, etc. So again, what do you think the price would be for a modern new TBC using current (and scarce) components?

Food for your thoughts. :)

It is very important, but it's not as easy (or cheap, or fast) as some seem to think lately.

TBC is a small part of problem, The biggest part is the capture cards and Windows 10, If you go to the trouble of forking few hundreds of thousands of dollars on a piece of equipment that only few are going to look for, You should focus on the big picture here, the entire process of getting the analog video signal from VCR into hard drive.

So what you really want to invest your money on is an entire new capture device that takes care of the signal from the VCR all the way to the HDD, It will include everything, line TBC, DNR, 3D comb filter, 2D comb filter, proc amp, frame TBC, Every function should be turned on and off individually without fiddling with cables like in the old fashion workflows. It will have S-Video and composite in and USB 3.0 out, and works on every platform on the market, If you start this I will be the first backer.

If that's aimed at me, I think you've misunderstood what is being discussed.

To quote yourself:

I don't think crowd-funding is the way here, but with modern hardware and enthusiasts, it's not without the realms of reality to start with a 'clean sheet' design. That's all I've said on here.

Remember, this is an enthusiasts project, not a commercial product for retail.

I have also written commercial firmware (although not FPGA, I'm a PIC/STM guy) and done digital signal processing, not with video freely admitted - but it's an interesting thing to set up a board for and throw it out to the community. Costs aren't that high if you're not profit-motivated, the idea of what we're sketching at the moment is entirely open, people can take with it and do what they with, test, program, adjust, and tinker. We're only working on core DSP and filtering at the moment. A true community project, also if anybody has ever thought about something like this, is a programmer, EE or mathematician (professional or just well versed in the topics) do please drop me a PM and I'll send some links to get involved.

The one I'm working with continues apace anyway, whether LS thinks it will come to anything or not. It could well fizzle into nothing, but a shoulder shrug and a remark of 'pfft... can't be done' won't help, chip in, provide sensible criticism or don't get involved are the three options as I see it.

It's certainly a 'trivial' exercise compared to making a new video machine - I wish anybody trying that every success but tooling for video heads if nothing else is going to be quite eye-watering!

This TBC/Capture card idea has been brought up numerous times here before and I think that's what LS is talking about.

Anyway, I think the best way of doing this is to approach a company that owns the IP cores of a certain design, Meaning that they do have the Soc FPGA design already, It just needs to be tailored to one's specific needs in terms of what I/O will be implemented and what functions need to be enabled or disabled, For instance Sing-Mai is a company that specializes in the A/V field, it costs them almost nothing to cook up a Gerber file and a firmware ready for ordering from a third party PCB manufacturing plant such as JLCPCB, If someone or a community approach them for such thing and say look we want your design for running a small batch can you help us out? Then a crowd funding will help in this scenario to see if you reach your goal of say 200 backers @ $500 a piece, Take away the manufacturing costs per unit say $50 and another $50 for shipping and packing and associated fees, Now that you have $80k to offer to the design company assuming you are doing this on a non profit basis just to see how things are going, if all well then raise the price for another batch to make some profit, that's how it is always being done in these situations where the market is unknown.

That's an interesting post, however, to roll these boards in small amounts is going to come in well above $50, especially at the moment. You're not wrong, it's definitely one approach though.

They would have a good deal of HDL already in place though, I can totally see where you're coming from there. My idea was just to assemble some fellow nerds and knock our heads together for a dev-board to see where we could go, 'spit-balling' if you will. My personal preference would be to make the whole thing totally open, hardware and software as (sometimes!) work great things come from the synergy of people working together, especially enthusiasts, but that's not the only way; naturally. There's a stack of 'wheel-reinventing' to be done.

If it's open, it can be modified, improved upon by a community etc.

It's somewhere between a thought experiment and some very rough proof of concepts on various bits of hardware at the moment, it's hardly 'coming soon', if at all.

I have ordered a few bits for experimentation and a dev-board at the moment, I'll feedback the full details in 'another place' as and when there's news.

Ultimately, as it stands, it's little more than a thought experiment, and a 'pub discussion' about the hardware required to accomplish, I'm happy to roll a couple of pre-alpha boards once there's something worth looking at.

That's all I can say really :wait:

The only problem is that “let’s get together and build something” hardly works, people are busy in life and they have other priorities, Just look at the VHS-decode project, it’s been dragging for years with no final outcome even when the hardware is readily available under the open source scheme. The only way to get it done unfortunately is to pay someone so that way if there is a bug or a delay you can bitch at somebody so they can get their shit together and get it done. I’ve seen so many crowd funding projects fail because of this I can or we can do it on our own, It just doesn’t work. So we have to disagree on this.

You know, I'm not disagreeing with you really. You've raised important points.

However, at the moment I'm one person and I'm not prepared to put a couple of my businesses up against this to bankroll it. What I am able to do is get a few geeky types together and let us sketch it out and knock some ideas around.

Idealistic maybe, I do not disagree with you, but I also believe until you've 'had a go' at trying to do something then, well you're left with just moaning about prices or waiting for somebody else to do something if you catch my drift? That's accomplished the square root of FA so far.

It costs a little bit of time to sort out a basis to start from and a few hundred dollars, that's an investment I'm willing to make (personally) as it's an opportunity to learn if nothing else. If anybody else wants to be proactive I'd do nought to stop them.

You've raised completely legitimate points though @latreche34 and they need careful contemplation. Also with VHS Decode, I'm going to start looking at this at you're right, it does seem to be running out of steam somewhat, it's a great project but could also be considered a warning.

If I have the skills I would but I'm nowhere near capable of reading the codes let alone writing them, It's just the way I look at it from previous attempts I've seen. Are there skilled people out there? Sure, I know quite few and they have been working on projects for years, PCM encoder for VHS, PCM decoder for VHS, VHS-decode, Cassette decks and turntable projects just to name few. Where are the results? No one knows.

It's not aimed at anybody, it's aimed at the topic.

That's taken completely out of context. That was a hardware hacking scenario, not a built-from-ground-up scenario. Completely different. Hardware R&D, and hacking aka reverse engineering, has nothing directly causal to do with the other.

Right. You do know we have a chip shortage, right? That will last for years. Certain chips are backlogged well in Q4 2023 right now, and keep getting pushed further back. Folks are vastly misunderestimating the costs here. Random amounts like $50 or $300 are not going to come close.

Again, these notions are often the results of being cheap, not that it's impossible. The cheapness is impossible. We're never talking $1.5k or $1k instead of the current going rate of $2k+, but $100. Some really stupid divorced-from-reality number. Then the person always has a cockamamie idea to add lots of features -- which of course would push the price back up, but the person seems oblivious to that.

You'd have better luck building a DeLorean, and going back to the 2000s to buy used DataVideo units, during that brief time when units were ~66% avg of new MSRP. Odds are, the person would still b!tch that it costs too much. (And it ignores paradoxes of removing supply.)

You remind me of certain parents and teachers. "Don't tell somebody that they can't do something! They can do anything if they put their mind to it!" But no. Example: I'm a dude. I can't birth a kid, no plumbing for it. (Not that I'd want to, but great example.) Sometimes realism needs to be injected into half-baked ideas. This is the type of nonsense than gave us the "everybody gets a trophy" generation. Unwilling to dole out the hard lessons on what didn't, can't, or shouldn't. Just lollipops and candy canes, tralalala.

You confuse "not liking" advice with "not good advice". No.

It has, over and over again, for years. That and software TBC. I'm often approached about this by somebody that has a can-do attitude, but lack the skills/knowledge that make it a can't-do. And I don't mean general IT/hardware/whatever. It takes more than "hey guys, let do it!!!". I now have a list of criteria to even bother discussing TBCs at this advanced level. Show me you actually know something first.

No. :laugh:

Again, random maths. I'm not laughing "at you", but "at the statement". You get a pass here, you know that you don't know. But it's a great example of the complete absurdity of these conversations. $50 doesn't even buy a single chip. (As some of you may be understanding now, I'm gotten very far into this over the years. With talented others, not alone.)

Utopian philosophy.

<sigh> Let me guess: the same Analog Devices "dev board" that has existed for years, and been looked over far more times than you can guess. It's a non-starter. No usable frame or line, unless the source is so good that it almost doesn't need a TBC at all. Then again, sometimes that TBC also makes decent video worse. I almost want to bang my head into the keyboard when somebody comes across that thing, and thinks they found some super double-secret item that nobody knew about. No, no, no. Not it.

:wall2:

Yeah, well, like your bar buddies, you're going to get ribbed for the dumb idea.
And next round's on me. :D

That's exactly it.

Project dev usually ends because:

- "It's good enough for me." (but works like crap for everybody else)
- "I need to spend more time with my kids."
- "I'm getting married."
- "Due to health, I have to take a leave." (and usually never returns, even if condition improved)
- :rant: aka in-fighting, which often leads to forks that also go nowhere
- Even :rip:
- But most often, the person ghosts, MIA, disappears entirely. (Sometimes, years later, decade later, the person returns. "Oh hey, is this still happening? LOL.")

For some things to succeed, there has to be a profit motive. That's the only way to ensure long-term interest and viability, and to have some degree of accountability (not even necessarily financial, but things like reputation).

But that's what it'll take to happen. There is reward, but only if you take risk. Not just money, but time.

To me, that's a problem. A wise person learns from the mistakes (and successes) of others. A dumbass has to repeat the mistakes, and only dreams of the successes (heads in the cloud type). Don't be that guy. You and I don't see eye to eye at times, but I think you're better than that.

Contrary to fun little sayings, dreamers don't do shit in this world. Doers do. But to do anything seriously, you have to have a realistic approach. That starts with research, in-depth knowledge, etc. You can't just jump in, hope for the best. That either won't end well, or just not have an ending at all.

Yep.

I think you misunderstood my $50 figure, although it is an approximation but it is for the PCB printing only, I've had quotes for a similar size PCB with all the components on it for $37 a piece from JLPCB, And that was for 10 batch, 500 plus I assume it will be cheaper, SMD components are cheap even the most famous chips. What you have missed though is the $80k I allocated for the design and testing. Off course the IP core holder may say fuck off but at least this is the cheapest way to go by vs doing R&D on your own, It would take you 100's of thousands of dollars.

Ah, gotcha.

But we understand each other. The costs are way higher than typical "geeks" think. And given how these conversations always start due to costs of existing TBCs, it's a non-starter.

Can it be done? Uphill battle, but maybe. And lots of costs, time.
Can it be done cheaper than existing units? No.

Again, I like the enthusiasm about using quality gear, and even making it. But you have to separate this nutty idea of it being a cheap process, crowdfunded, open-source, garage project, etc.

I don't know about $100Ks, but certainly a fistful of $Ks. Not including time = $.

Neither am I for this idea of lets get together and make a capture card, I was just making the contrast between paying a pro to do it vs spending years of fiddling with an idea with zero money in it, that's all.

I'd be satisfied with somebody simply making Win10 (or even Win7) drivers for classic quality cards like the AIW. As a bonus, making ATI MMC work. That'd be a lot easier than trying to make a new card. This idea of "let's make a new capture card" has about as much of a chance as magically turning the Easycap into a quality card. No, what we get instead are superfluous promises that fall flat, be it RetroTINKs or whatever.

I think the RetroTink is a good first step, probably its main weakness is that it expects a high quality video signal. It needs more memory for buffering, maybe a more powerful FPGA to handle timebase correction, and it needs to output an interlaced signal and provide the standard proc amp functions that you find in capture cards.

New member, old thread. :)

I have been searching on eBay and many other marketplaces for a Datavideo TBC-1000 or equivalent for a couple months but didn't find any deals, and I'm not willing to pay 2k for a used device.

I agree on the issues posted in this thread, getting a product like this designed / engineered / tested / manufactured takes a lot more than a few people sticking their heads together and coming up with 300 bucks a unit.

I'd be happy to pay 1k for a new unit with current parts and tech. Best course will be through Datavideo, so I contacted them, explained the increased demand on used devices and asked if they have any interest in a production re-run or a new device. I sent it to headquarters in Taiwan. Maybe it will arrive somewhere in management and maybeeeee they will look into it. Not counting on it, but its worth a try. I'll keep ya'll posted.

That won't do any good. DataVideo made weak TBCs in the 2010s, all the "also has TBC" devices.

DataVideo would have to create a TBC using modern chips, so R&D/testing/etc. And there's no commercial ROI there, which is their target market (commercial, largely edu/gov from the looks of it). They sell appliances, camera accessories (shooter gear).

Not DIY/home/hobby conversion, not even professional transfer, as it's a legacy task with an unknown but approaching end date. You can also bet a TBC will cost more than $1k, as costs to produce will be higher than anybody here apparently thinks. And the return margin won't be low single digits (watch Shark Tank sometime, which will give basic knowledge on this metric). Costs come down with scale, but this market has no scale.

The same is true here:
(1) cheap
(2) good

Pick 1.

"Fast" does not apply, so not a pick 2 of 3 scenario. This is how it's always been with video hardware, be it 90s, 00s, 10s or 20s. (I wasn't buying higher end gear in 70s-80s, but I doubt if it was any different then.) Now, there are budget items, that blend 1 and 2. But a TBC cannot be that sort of device, it's very binary, good or bad. At best, good with massive caveat that hits the quality and usability, and a new TBC like that won't sell at all.

It's not negativity, it's just realism. :2cents:

Remember that DataVideo cannot even be bothered with retaining R&D info for past product (LOTS of documentation from 90s/00s gear was lost, misplaced at best), as per my conversations with them several years ago. Nor can they be bothered with simply repairing existing units, even when offered substantial pay to do so.

Even if DataVideo decided to do something (and they won't), this would not be a fast process. Several years minimum. But you have a project now. Would you like to see it done sooner, or later, or never? Time has value, and waiting (and on an unknown) often isn't the best solution. Others have waited, usually due to cheapness, and seen prices only rise, and gear become more scarce. Don't do that to yourself, as many others here have over the years.

FYI, if you're finding a good unit for $2k, that is discounted, for quality extant units. But a good TBC is not going to come from eBay, especially with the caps issues now afflicting TBC-1000 units. What you'll get is problem gear, and video newbies won't realize it until the return window has long closed. So you're stuck with a $k device, you were a sucker.

I didn't go by the company that made the best TBC, I went by the company that is still around, still in the same market and based on some research more likely to pick up on the request.

Looking at the folks searching for a TBC these days, here and on other places, the vast majority would be happy to have access to a NEW TBC-1000, with new / current components, or a new device as I mentioned, at 1k.

I'm in no rush, own a JVC with decent (enough) TBC for now. None of my transfers are for professional means.

I'm aware of the cap issues, 2nd degree in Electronic Engineering (MSc), this is a topic that affects most older devices not just TBCs. I run my own e-lab and do design / repair for personal use.

DataVideo is no longer in the same market. Different video gear niche entirely now, and for years. The entire reason DataVideo is still around is because they pivoted. Other companies didn't escape the analog vacuum, and got sucked into oblivion. As per my conversations, most of the DataVideo folks that created the quality TBCs are long gone, as is documentation to even recreate -- and that's not surprising, the same is true of VCRs, sometimes even capture cards (AIW especially, AMD gutted ATI).

If you can repair, then try to locate a damaged TBC. That's how you'll get to your $1k price range. You want an item that sells for less than fair market price. DIY fix the gear, to DIY the video project. Others here have done that before. That's far more realistic. It's really no different than used cars, the fixxer-upper DIY project,

Being professional has nothing to do with getting the essential tools for transfer. Being professional just means you get paid to do the task for others. The tools do not change for DIY or hobby.

They are in the same market of video production. Processing analog data is no rocket science, still done on the audio level, every day.

One of my company's manufacturing sites is in Taiwan. The Taiwanese are highly qualified and dedicated when it comes to any planning, design work, workflow, milestones, testing and documentation, much like Germany engineering. If there is any company that maintains documentation, it will be a German, Taiwanese or Japanese company. There is no comparison to US based endeavors that grow fast, sell out, and dump everything the day the executives drop out with the cash in hand.

Doing things professionally is a decision I make based on my needs, not how others define it. Transferring some old VHS tapes is a hobby that doesn't increase my net assets. Bringing out my perfectionism will only add costs for little gains.

Being mentally able to decide when to be professional is something you will learn fast when you run a company on an international level, with locations in different markets, dealing with different definitions for a "professional" product or service. Offering a "professional" product in the US will get you run over by the competition that sells cheap crap made in China.

There is a reason why the US sold out most of its working middle class and related tax revenue. US consumers are cheap idiots. Try to find quality power tools made in the US. Most US companies couldn't compete with the crap you can buy at Home Depot and gave up. US consumers buy throw away products, they don't care for professional products that last a lifetime. So trying to sell a "professional" product in the US is admirable, but not going to work. Not in this society where most people don't have any cash assets and keep buying as cheap as possible, often on credit.

Now in Germany, you are still forced to deliver a "professional" product. Looking at tools, the best ones come indeed from Germany, made in Germany. Check out HAZET or FEIN for example.

Not even the concept of "professional" service works in the US anymore. All long outsourced to India etc. Try to start a new US business with "professional" service, located in the US, with US based payrolls. You will be out of the game fast, because US consumers go by price first, and second, even in the service sector.

In this context, a mid range, new TBC-1000 with current components for 1k would be much better than buying used ones for 2k, or modded ones for almost 3k.

As I said, chances are dim for DataVideo to follow up, let alone follow through, but it was worth the email and the call one of my staff members in Taiwan will do if I don't hear back.

-- merged --

PS: only defective TBC-1000 I could find sits at over 1.8k. That's still 800 more, for used and old hardware.

I contacted DataVideo and signed up here not just for me but for all those trying to find one at a reasonable price. Almost 3k is not reasonable for what you get, its just the outcome of high(er) demand and almost no supply.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/284442843698

I can buy one for 3k at any given moment, but as a business owner I refuse to waste money, especially when the investment won't make me any profit.

I think too much is made of how technically 'tricky' this is, TBC was done discreetly in the 1960s and in to the 1970s with some of the Sony broadcast stuff. I don't want to say it's 'trivial' or 'easy' but compared to a lot of DSP it's not the bleeding edge.

When it could be done with bits of glass, fast FIFO looks rather simple.

It's a similar story here in Britbong Land, although we never had a fantastic reputation for making much, we started the home computer revolution with companies like Sinclair who would routinely suggest various fixes for their computers involving Blu-tak (might not translate to American, the putty stuff you stick things on walls with) - that upstart Commodore bringing a least some measure of quality!

Or British cars, a whole tale in itself. German automotive quality has suffered though, Mercedes carry little-to-no cachet here now such is the middling build quality and innovation they seem to have settled upon. They're now regarded as a mid-market commercial vehicle maker by and large in the automotive community, nothing they've launched here in the last decade or so seems to hold any great impression of quality. I do drive a BMW though, always have, always will :wink2: I might be biased.

Oh, and Wera tools, which are my first choice for general engineering hand tools.

With regards to documentation, my professional electronics experience is mostly in environmental monitoring or (especially) pharmaceutical; both of which full and complete documentation is part of the package and not remotely optional. In pharma, improper documentation control is simply not tolerated so I can't speak from personal experience in other fields.

Your views though do broadly correlate with views my friends who work in other industries have, so you don't seem to be alone in this.

To bring this back around though, from an outsider's perspective, the US economy is starting to look ever-so-slightly scary.

At this point there is no way out of our national debt / low quality of everything / failing infrastructure / buying everything including time on credit / Feds printing money / depletion of all natural resources / throw away society. Not in the US.

Edit: Nope, that got far too political, back to the video topic. -LS

I don't want to get into a political discussion on here
I'll just say we would probably agree on a few things.
I'll leave it here, but feel free to PM if you want a quick chat from a UK perspective.

Edit: Too political, back to the video topic. -LS

Video processing isn't all the same, and if it wasn't "rocket science" then the Easycaps would work perfectly. But that just isn't reality.

While I'd normally agree that certain geographies tend to do certain things with more care, there's always exceptions. Generalities are just generally true, not always true.

You want profit motive?
Buy the damaged TBC-1000, fix it, use it, the resell it when done.
In the end:
- you got a free TBC to use, hopefully even made a few extra bucks off it
- you did a good deed, repair quality gear our video community need

$2k can be fair if the issues are known, easy to fix
Otherwise, wait for $1k or less damaged unit.

Pre-1995 TBCs really have nothing in common with TBCs needed for consumer analog digital conversion.

Politics has a way of leeching into conversations in recent past years, but Twitter/Facebook-style name-calling commentary is not tolerated. That always comes across as knuckle-dragging uneducated, as well as inciting off-topic arguments.

Besides Data Video, there are few more companies that are still around, Black Magic, Ensemble Designs, Grass Valley, Aja, and more, But their focus is not SD video, because it's obsolete, done, no market for it. Their focus is on 4K, 8K production where the money is. If you are one of the very few that want a quality product from back in the day just be patient, they do show up online for a price usually less than what a new good quality product would cost not even accounting for inflation.

What changed in 1995?

I would also like to point out that SingMai has released a new capture device last year, They just released the latest version of its user manual.

Funny how I'm in a different league/problem lol.

I've been putting together a setup for 2 years now, slowly collecting what I need. I got my XP machine, an AIW card, Turtle Beach, a new-old-stock TBC-1000.... The one thing I was unable to find/get thus far is a proper VCR I'm happy with. I've been looking for an AG-1980 in forever and those things are unobtainium unless you want to feed in the wallet of an eBay scammer.

So I'd rather crowdfund a good VCR :D

Regarding the Sing-Mai…what is the device playing a tape? Is it not included?
And scoring a nos TBC-1000 is interesting in and of itself.
THIS site is probably the best way to find a primo 1980, you must contact Deter, he’s a member here.

I agree. I felt pretty lucky scoring this 2 years ago. I wish I knew the story behind it. The seller was the kind that liquidates bankrupt warehouses. It's this score that convinced me to upgrade the rest of my workflow to a more prosumer level with some of the best gear I could find.. And I loved the results. To the point I'm thinking of going back recapture all my earliest work, if I can get the first and most important part of the workflow. I'm just a hobbyist, a data hoarder, with a preservationist passion and addiction.

Thanks, yes I'm aware of Deter. I also remember reading a post he doesn't really do this any longer. Maybe I remember wrong. Still, even finding a repairable unit for him to work on seems impossible these days. At least when you live in Canada.

That worries me. Are you sure the unit is good?

Starting in late 2019, maybe into early 2021, the marketplaces were flooded with bad TBC-1000s. Not just caps, but many issues. It seemed to be offline auctions (or online pickup auctions) that resulted in bulk buys of video gear. The sellers thought they struck it rich, but then many buyers started to return. The sellers were generally scummy, tried to fight the returns. I sometimes wonder if a DataVideo storage cache of bad gear was liquidated.

I've traveled the areas, lots of scummy people. Think Storage Wars, but way worse. The auction buyers (later resellers) know nothing. I often say they wouldn't know a TBC from a toaster, but they all have dollars signs in their eyes. But a TBC is only worth the investment if working, not in a random condition.

He's growing tired of the poor nature of decks. Sometimes idiots messed with them, other times they've just aged beyond salvation. He recently had to reject some of my decks. My unit was too far gone, and I take care of my gear. The others were donors, long shots.

Those AG-1980 decks are money pits. It will cost you about $2k minimum per deck to actually get repaired. The worst part is it'll probably cost $500 to buy a boat anchor deck. AG-1980 is a risky buy now.

As lovely as it would be, that's the tricky project, a TBC is trivial in comparison.

I would, at a rough estimate, say you'd need to dump a few million into getting tooled and a facility to produce video heads. They are (and I've got my metrologist hat on now) the most exquisitely manufactured item that will be encountered in a domestic situation if you take away silicone. They easily swallowed a large part of the BOM of machines, and at the dawn of the technology were the single most expensive component(s) of any video machine. The rejection ratio of head wafers was very high, even by the time they had reached commodity pricing. The tooling required to manufacture them was impressive, and I would guess any extant tooling is now beyond practical use.

You'd need a skilled engineering team plus allied professionals to get that one rolling. None of the large sources of heads (fill in your favourite Japanese/Korean Magnetics Co) would be remotely interested in it, and I like I say and tooling which happens to be left would be now, in likelihood, unusable.

Unless somebody finds a stock of heads, which could change the equation quite considerably.

Just as one example, the comparatively much, much simpler audio cassette mechanism is no longer a viable device to manufacture, and heads are all from the same low-quality source. When Marantz and similar are using the generic Tanashin (or clone) mechanisms that should be an indicator.

As one who straddles both communities, there's a considerably more active community in audio cassettes reproduction than video cassette reproduction, that I can assure you, and those guys can't petition one of the major players to even consider releasing their designs the 80s, which as I'll reiterate, is, to be frank, about an order of magnitude simpler than a VCR reproduction system in terms of magnetic-head engineering.

Somebody who could produce a good to excellent new quality audio cassette deck in the $1500-2500 price range could find a fully satisfied orderbook overnight. But even that isn't enough inertia.

I'd spend $5000 right now if somebody did come up with a genuinely excellent quality cassette deck! I spend several hundreds of dollars every year having my classics serviced!

Video machine electronics can be designed and manufactured comparatively simply, the CAD/Blender brigade could design an effective mechanism, but the video heads I'm almost certain would be the biggest hurdle to overcome.

I haven't had any problems with it so far. Haven't used it in a year tho so something could have developed since.

Good to know about that flood of bad units though.

Yeah, that's what I meant by "repairable".
I'm almost at the point that "money is no object". Heck I even considered buying from an eBay scammer knowingly at some point, thinking that even an overpriced barely working unit could be a starting point to something. But there's just too many unknowns at this point, and my morals are the first obstacle here anyway. No way I'm encouraging such practice.

That's what a crazy "I won't settle for anything but the best" mindset does to you 😂

Thanks for your input lordsmurf. Always very informative.

I fully agree. That was meant as a joke, hence the :D emoji.
As an engineer myself, I fully realize how improbable a new VCR will ever see the light of day. And even if it did, it would be crap. Look at the Compact Cassette, there's only one manufacturer of mechs left, and it's the cheapest one. Or how all "new" turntables are gimmicky crap.

The best we can ever hope for, and even that is a complete pipe dream because there's never going to be any demand for it, is one day we get some kind of gear that can scan a mangnetic tape directly, linearly... Kind of like SDR (Software Defined Radio) but for magnetic medium. Similar in some ways to the VHS-decode project, but without requiring to disassemble/rework old VCRs to use the heads. The advantage of something like this however, is that it would work for any kind of magnetic tape, not just VHS, enlarging the market somewhat.
How much of a pipedream is it? More than KryoFlux, which does the same for floppy disks. At least in this case, the hardware already exists. Floppy drives already gives direct access to the magnetic flux of the medium. And the digital nature of the information makes it soooooo much easier.

And yes, that's just my opinion. In no way am I an authority or subject matter expert ;)

EDIT: I've just re-read your post, and somehow I missed the part about Tanashin. I see we had the same thing in mind ;)

No, It's a capture device at a whopping 27MHz sampling rate, built in TBC and a very sophisticated pro amp including luma and chrma DNR, A unique comb filter for composite input with 3 options, notch, line and frame (aka 3D comb filter). It has SDI digital output, typical rec.601 525/625 SMPTE-259M standard, that needs to be interfaced into computer using SDI/PCIe, SDI/USB3 or SDI/Thunderbolt.

A few years ago I had similar thoughts of: "Can't we FPGA anything nowadays?" especially with the pixelFX morph promising TBC functionality before it came out. After reading for days (weeks?), I got the feeling that waiting on a project like that with hardware/software designed to work with 20+ year old media was very impractical. My tapes were shot in the late 80's & 90's and I wasn't willing to risk losing family videos to save some money. I'm glad I got my TBC-1000 when I did. Money I can get back, videos/memories I can't.

If the community somehow did design a new generation frame-TBC, great! But I personally wasn't willing to wait and that comes down to each individual's comfort level and amount of disposable income. Just my :2cents:

Snell & Wilcox, Ensemble Designs, Aja, Grass Valley and others FPGA'ed it a decade ago and it was more than "Practical" because it eliminated the conversion back to analog and everything is controlled via a menu so you will get to turn things on and off and watch the changes instantly without having to disconnect the equipement from the chain, capture samples and compare them later, Since I started using such devices I ditched all consumer stuff. Few years ago these things were almost for free plus the shipping online, You missed that window.

Hmm, I'm not familiar with these, but interested. Looking at them I assume these were all industry grade tech? If these FPGA TBCs are out there, could you not copy the instructions onto an new FPGA and make more? And if so, why hasn't anyone on this thread tried that? Genuine questions.

SingMai just did that and they have a device for sale right now made in 2021 and it is the cheapest you can get for the features it has ($700), It is the post right above yours or check post #27.

Have you posted any recordings you've made with this device, yet?

They are right in my signature.